Chips: a Walloon speciality

A nice bag of chips is good to eat with friends and family, in a cone or a carton, from noon till dawn. And there are just as many of these stalls in towns as there are in the country, at motorway service stations, village squares, etc.

The right sauce for every frite

You can’t have chips without a nice sauce in Belgium, and there are plenty to choose from, from the traditional mayonnaise to sauces with evocative names like mammouth, andalouse, mafia, brazil, bansai, tzigane, etc.

Frites may well be a Belgian invention, but they’re Walloon first and foremost

One legend, from 1781, has it that during harsh winters, the River Meuse in the Namur region would freeze over, so the locals couldn’t get at the small fish that they used to fry, so instead they would cut up potatoes in the shape of fish and fry them instead.

Frites and quality

Chips have their own special charter – the measure of quality for a good frite.

Not just any old frite will do: a good chip officially has to be 1 cm thick and fried first at 150° and then at 175°. The result is a golden chip that’s crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

And to make good chips, you need good potatoes, which is why our chips taste so good. The Terra Nostra label is the quality mark for potatoes produced in Wallonia.

Numerous varieties of potato are grown in Wallonia. There are the classics, like the Charlotte or the Nicola, and the more traditional ones, like the Corne de Gatte, the Ratte and the Plate de Florenville.

Visit the website of Terra Nostra: the quality label for Walloon potatoes.